Mystery Centres

Schmidt Number: S-5503

On-line since: 10th November, 2004

LECTURE
VIII.

Dornach,
December 8, 1923.

YOU
have seen that the Initiation of the Hibernian Mysteries described
yesterday had for its object a real insight into the secrets of the
world and man, for the inner soul-experiences of which I had to speak
were of a deeply impressive kind for the human mind and soul-life.
They really concern everything which leads man along the path into
the spirit-world, so that by means of specially impressive inner
experiences he attains to certain conquests, essentially strengthens
his own power through these conquests, and thereby by one way or
another presses through into the spirit-world.

We saw, then, how in Initiation in Hibernia the
candidate was placed before two symbolic statues — we must not
misunderstand the word “symbolic.” I described to you,
firstly, the nature of these statues and secondly, through what
sensations and soul-experiences the pupil was conducted on the
occasions for contemplation of these statues.

Now you must be quite clear on this point; the
impression that one receives from such majestic statues in
circumstances such as I have described is of course not to be
compared with that which one receives through description only, but
is an extraordinarily powerful, inner impression. Hence it was
possible that after the pupil had gone through all that I have
described the Initiator was able to cause the experiences he had gone
through in the presence of each individual statue to echo for a long
while in his mind. The pupil was simply kept to this, that that which
he had experienced through the male statue, through the female
statue, echoed in him. For weeks together — these things are
determined by the Karma of the pupil — sometimes longer, in
many cases shorter, the pupils were kept above all to feel the echo
of the one, of the male statue. The tests of which I spoke yesterday
were first made in the case of both statues, for the impressions
which were made by both statues had to flow together into the deepest
soul-life of the pupil. Yet the pupil was held in the most intense
fashion to the experience of the impression which he had received
from the male statue. And I will now describe the impression as it
echoed in him.

Of course, for this, we must use words which are not
coined for initiation experiences such as these. Hence much that is
expressed in these words must be realized according to its true inner
significance. That which the pupil at first experienced when he gave
himself up to the impression from the male statue, was a kind of
soul-freezing, an actual benumbing of soul, a soul-stiffening, which
came over him more and more the oftener he allowed these things to
echo within him — a soul numbness which felt like a bodily
numbness. In the intervening periods of time the pupil might
certainly care for what is necessary for life, but his soul was again
and again brought into this echo, and he then experienced this
numbness. This numbness brought about an alteration of his
consciousness — it was certainly a very stem Initiation even if
it no longer recalled the ancient form of the Primeval Mysteries. One
cannot say that the consciousness was dulled, but the pupil became
aware: “The state of consciousness into which I have come is
one to which I am wholly unaccustomed. I can actually at first make
no use of it. I can make nothing of it.” The pupil really only
felt that this state of consciousness was filled with a sensation of
numbness. But presently he felt that that which was benumbed in him,
in fact he himself, had been taken up by the Cosmos. He felt as if
transported into the expanses of the Universe. He could say to
himself: “The Cosmos receives me.”

Then something quite extraordinary came to him —
not a vanishing of consciousness but an alteration of consciousness.
When the pupil had experienced this kind of numbness for a
sufficiently long time — the Initiators had to take care that
it was a sufficiently long time — when the pupil had
experienced this kind of numbness, and this being taken up by the
Cosmos, so that he said to himself somewhat as follows: “The
rays of the sun, the rays of the stars are drawing me, they are
drawing me out into the whole Cosmos yet I remain actually together
within myself;” when the pupil had experienced this long enough
he attained a remarkable perception. He now actually learned to know
whence arose this consciousness which had come upon him during the
numbness, for now he received, according to his experiences echoing
from this or that, the most manifold impressions of
winter-landscapes. Winter landscapes were before him in the spirit,
winter landscapes in which he looked into whirling flakes of snow
which filled the air — all, as has been said, seen in the
spirit — or landscapes where he gazed into forests, where snow
lay pressing down the trees or the like, really things which, as has
been said, recalled that which he had seen here or there in life, and
which always gave him the impression of reality. So that he felt
after he had been taken up by the Cosmos, as if his own consciousness
conjured up whole wanderings in time through winter landscapes, and
at the same time he felt as if he were not in his body but
nevertheless in his sense organs. He felt his being in his eyes, he
felt his being in his ears, he felt his being also on the surface of
his skin. Here especially when he experienced his sense of feeling,
his sense of touch spread out over his skin, he perceived: “I
have become like the elastic but hollow statue.” And he felt an
inner union of his eyes, for example, with these landscapes. He felt
as if this whole landscape that he gazed upon were active in each
eye, as if it worked everywhere into his eye, as if his eye were an
inner mirror for all that which appeared outside.

But there was something more that he felt; he did not
feel himself as a unity, but in very fact he felt his ego multiplied
as many times as he had senses; he felt his ego multiplied twelve
times, and because he felt his ego multiplied twelve times there came
to him this remarkable experience, so that he said: “There is
an ego that sees through my eye, there is an ego that works through
my sense of thinking, in my sense of speech, in my sense of touch, in
my sense of life. I am really split up in the world.” From this
arose a living longing for union with a Being out of the Hierarchy of
the Angels, in order that from this union with the Being out of the
Hierarchy of the Angels he should receive ability and power to
control this splitting-up of the ego into the individual
sense-experiences. And out of all this there arose in his ego the
experience: “Why have I my senses?”

This whole peculiar experience was such that the pupil
felt how all that is connected with the senses and with the nerve
continuations of the senses inwardly and is one with the inner being
of man, how that this is related to the actual surroundings on earth.
The senses belong to the winter — this is what the pupil felt.
In this whole life which he went through in the changing winter
landscapes which, as has been said, recalled that which he had seen
in life, but which with great beauty rayed from the spiritual towards
him, out of all this experience the pupil gained a unified condition
of soul. This unified condition of soul had the following content: I
have experienced in my Mystery Winter-wandering that which in the
Cosmos is actually past. The snow and ice-masses of my magic winter
have shown me what destructive forces work in the Cosmos. I have
learned to know the impulses of destruction in the Cosmos, and my
numbness on the way to my Mystery Winter-wandering was indeed the
announcement that I should see into that which was present in the
Cosmos as forces which come over out of the past into the present,
but arrive in the present as dead Cosmic forces.

This was first of all communicated to the pupil through
the echo of his experiences before the male statue.

Then he was brought to the echo of his experiences with
the statue which was plastic, not elastic. And it was as if he now
fell, not into an inner numbness but into an inner condition of heat,
as into a fever condition of the soul, into a fever condition of such
a nature that things which have power, because of their inner nature,
to work on the soul, manifested themselves first as bodily
symptom-complexes. The pupil felt as if he were being inwardly
pressed, as if everything were pressing hard, his breath were
pressing hard, his blood in every direction were pressing too hard.
The pupil experienced a great anxiety, even to a deep inner distress
of soul. In this deep soul-distress the second thing arose which he
had to experience, and that which was born for him out of the soul
distress can be clothed somewhat in the following words: “I
have something in me which in my ordinary earth-life is claimed by my
corporality. This must be conquered, my earth-ego must be conquered.”
This (impression) lived powerfully in the consciousness of the pupil.

Then when he had for a sufficiently long time
experienced this inner condition of heat, this inner distress, this
feeling that the earth-ego must be conquered, there arose in him
something by which he knew that it was not the earlier state of
consciousness, but it was a state of consciousness well known to him,
the state of consciousness in dreaming. While, in the case of the
first, which arose out of a numbness, he had clearly the feeling that
he was in a condition of consciousness which he did not know in
ordinary life, he now recognized in his condition of consciousness a
kind of dreaming. He dreamed, but he dreamed in contrast to that
which he had dreamed earlier, and again in reminiscence of that which
he had experienced, the most wonderful summer landscapes. But he knew
these were dreams, dreams which affected him with an intense joy or
an intense pain, according to whether that which came to him out of
the being of Summer was either sorrowful or joyful, but withal with
the possession with which a man is possessed by dreams.

You only need to remember what is possible to a dream
which first rises in pictures, out of which you wake with a beating
heart, hot and in anxiety. This condition of being inwardly possessed
made itself known to the pupil in a quite elementary natural way, so
that he said to himself: “My inner being has brought the Summer
as a dream to my consciousness, the Summer as a dream.”

The pupil now knew that that which was there as magic
Summer before his consciousness in continuous change may be likened
to the impulses from the vast Future of the Cosmos. But now he did
not feel himself as he did before, dismembered into his senses as a
multiplicity; he felt himself now truly drawn together as into a
unity. He felt himself as drawn together into his heart.

This is the culmination, the highest point to which he
attained, this being drawn together into his heart, this inner
self-possession and feeling of kinship in his innermost human nature,
not with the Summer as one sees it externally, but with the dream of
this Summer.

And following on, the pupil said to himself “In
that which the dream of Summer gives, which I inwardly experience in
my human being, in that lies the future.” When the pupil had
gone through this experience there came to him the experience that
these two conditions followed each other. He looked, let us say, upon
a landscape consisting of meadows, ponds and small lakes. He looked
upon ice and snow. This changed into whirling, falling snow, like a
mist of snowflakes. This prospect gradually grew dimmer, and finally
vanished into nothing. In the moment when it vanished into nothing,
when he felt himself to a certain extent in empty space, in that
moment the summer-dreams rose on the threshold. And the pupil had the
consciousness: “Now Past and Future meet in my own soul-life.”

And from now onwards the pupil learned to look on the
outer world, and to say of this outer world as a permanent truth for
the Future: In this world which surrounds us, in this world from
which we derive our corporeality, in this world something continually
is dying. In the winter crystals of the snow we have the outer sign
of the spirit which is continually dying in matter. As men we are not
yet fully in the condition to feel this dying spirit, which is
rightly symbolized in outer nature in snow and ice, unless Initiation
has taken place. But if Initiation has taken place then man knows
that the spirit dies continually in matter, announces itself in
freezing and frozen nature. Annihilation exists here everywhere. Out
of this annihilation first of all something like nature-dreams are
born. And nature-dreams contain the germs for the World future. But
World death and World birth would not meet if man did not stand
between them. For if man did not stand between them — as I have
said, I am describing to you simply the experiences which the pupil
of the Hibernian Initiation inwardly went through — if man did
not stand between them the actual processes into which the pupil
gazed by means of the new consciousness born of the numbness would be
an actual world death, and the dream would not follow the world
death. No Future would result out of the Past. Saturn, Sun, Moon,
Earth would be there; no Jupiter, no Venus, and no Vulcan. In order
that the Future of the Cosmos may join itself to the Past man must
stand between Past and Future. The pupil knew this directly out of
what he experienced.

That which the pupil had lived through in this way was
now summarized for him by his Initiators. The first condition, when
he had gone through numbness, when he felt himself sucked up by the
Cosmos, was summarized for him by his Initiators in words which I may
give you somewhat in the following way, in the German language:

In the depths shalt thou solveThe riddle of fever-heated evilHow Truth is enkindledAnd through thee finds foundation in Being.

Remember that at the stage of which I spoke at the end
of yesterday's lecture, the pupil was dismissed with the words which
appeared in the place of the two statues, with the words “Science,”
“Art.” “Science” appeared in the place of the
statue which actually said: “I am Knowledge but I lack Being.”
“Art” was written in the place of the statue which said:
“I am Phantasy, but I lack Truth.” And the pupil had
experienced all the difficulty, all the inner fearful difficulty,
because inwardly full of desire he had actually chosen something else
instead of knowledge. For it had become quite clear to him:
Concerning knowledge which is acquired on earth, only ideas, only
images belong to it; Being is lacking. The pupil had now experienced
the after-effects. Out of the after-effects he had learned to know
that man must find Being for the knowledge he has acquired, by losing
himself in Cosmic spaces:

In Spaces far and wide shalt thou learnHow in Blue of Ether-distanceWorld-Being first vanishesAnd finds itself again in thee.

For this was in fact the sensation He rushes out as it
were into Ether-distances which are bounded by the Blue of Space. He
unites himself at last with this Blue of the far distances, but then
that which was Earth is so scattered into the far spaces that it is
as if changed into nothingness. And the pupil learned to experience
annihilation in gazing upon the magic winter landscape. And he knows
now that it is man alone who can hold himself upright in these far
spaces, which lead away into the blue Ether-distances.

The tendency of Phantasy to disregard truth, that very
tendency to be contented with a relationship to the world which does
not include truth but runs amok in arbitrary subjective pictures,
this tendency the pupil had experienced. But now, out of the
dreamlike magical Summer experience he had gained the insight can
carry out into the world that which as creative Phantasy arises in
me. Out of my inner Being like the pictures of Phantasy grow
Imaginations, Imaginations of plants. If I had only the pictures of
Phantasy I should be a stranger to that which is around me. If I have
Imaginations, there grows out of my own inner being that which I then
find in this plant or that plant, in this animal or that animal, in
this man or that man, all that I find in my inner being clothes
itself in something that is external to me. And for everything that
confronts me in the outer world I can cause to arise out of the
depths of my own Soul-Being something which is connected with it,
something which clothes itself with it.

This two-fold connection with the world is something
which remained with the pupil as an inner grand and impressive
sensation as the after-effect of both statues. And the pupil really
learned in this way, on the one side to stretch his soul spiritually
out into Cosmic Spaces, and on the other to plunge deeply into his
own inner being, where this inner being works, not with the
feebleness of ordinary consciousness but where it works with
half-reality, i.e., chilled or shaken and bewitched as by dreams. The
pupil learned to bring this whole intensity of inner impulse into
union with the whole intensity of outer impulse. Out of the relation
to the winter landscape and the relation to the summer landscape he
has struggled through to explanations concerning external nature and
concerning himself; he has become closely related to external nature
and to himself. Then he was well prepared to go, as it were, through
a kind of recapitulation. In this recapitulation it was brought
clearly before his soul by his Initiators: “Thou must inwardly
control thy soul in its condition of numbness. Thou must inwardly
control thy going out into Cosmic Spaces, and thirdly, thou must
inwardly control thyself when thou dost feel poured out into and
multiplied in thy senses. Thou must make inwardly clear to thyself
what each condition is, thou must be able to distinguish exactly each
one of these three conditions from the other, thou must have an
etheric inner experience of each one of these three conditions.”

When the pupil now called up again before his soul in
full consciousness the condition of inner numbness there appeared
before his soul all that he had experienced before he had descended
from the spiritual worlds to Earth, before the earthly conception of
his body, when he had drawn together out of cosmic spaces etheric
impulses and etheric forces in order to surround himself with an
etheric body. The pupil in the Mysteries of Hibernia was thus guided
into the vision of the last condition before the descent into the
physical body. Then he had to make quite clear to himself the inner
experience when he went out into the Cosmic Spaces. Here he felt at
this second time, at this recapitulation, not as if he were sucked up
by the rays of the sun and the stars, but he felt at this
recapitulation as if something came to meet him, as if from all sides
out of the spaces the Hierarchies came to meet him, as if other
experiences also came to meet him. He felt also that which lay still
further behind in his pre-earthly life. Then he had to make quite
clear to himself the condition when he was poured out into the
senses, and found himself as if split up into the sense-world. For
here he had reached the middle point of existence, between death and
a new birth.

You see how that which gives the candidates for
Initiation entrance into these hidden worlds, worlds to which,
however, man with his being belongs, can be reached in the most
manifold ways. And when we look around in the way in which yesterday
and indeed frequently I have indicated, then we may say: In the
different Mystery Centres the vision into the super-sensible world is
reached in the most manifold ways.

Why man must strive in such manifold ways, why in all
the Mysteries a single spiritual path was not indicated, we shall
show in later lectures. Today I only mention the fact. But all these
different paths of the Mysteries were appointed in order to unveil
the hidden sides of existence in regard to the world and man, which
have again and again been shown from the most varied points of view
here in these studies and in other lectures and writings.

It was then made clear to the pupil that he ought also
now to go through those other conditions which he had experienced as
an echo from the other statue, he must live through those conditions
inwardly separated, so that for each single condition he should
always have an inner clear knowledge according to the feeling which
he had experienced, which he should recall then in full
consciousness. This then he did. And in the case of that of which I
have spoken as a kind of distress of the soul, he felt directly that
which follows in the soul-experience after death.

Then came the vision through that which he further
experienced, when external nature showed itself in summer landscape,
but as a dream of summer landscape.

When he lived through this again, and with a full
consciousness now separated this condition from the other condition
of consciousness, he learned to know what would be the further
progress of his post-earthly life. And when he made the feeling of
compression into his heart's being quite clear and living in his
consciousness, then he could reach to the middle point of existence
between death and a new birth. And the Initiator could say to him:

Learn in spirit to see Winter-beingTo thee will come the vision of the pre-earthly.

Learn in spirit to dream Summer-beingTo thee will come experience of the post-earthly.

I beg you to notice exactly the words which I use, for
in the relation here of the vision of the pre-earthly to the
experience of the post-earthly, and in the relation of seeing to
dreaming, rests the mighty difference which lay in these two
experiences of the Initiation candidates of the Mysteries of
Hibernia.

How this Initiation stands in connection with the whole
history of mankind, in the whole evolution of mankind, what it
betokens for human evolution, and how far the whole experience had a
still deeper meaning — in that, at the stage where I closed the
last lecture, something like a vision of the Christ appeared before
the pupil of Hibernia — this will be set before you in the next
lecture.